


clemency

by kestriel



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Named Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:54:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26813953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kestriel/pseuds/kestriel
Summary: His husband returns. Aymeric teaches him how to use a sword.(If only it were that simple.)
Relationships: Aymeric de Borel/Warrior of Light
Comments: 1
Kudos: 23





	clemency

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moonlitdrive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlitdrive/gifts).



> happy birthday!!! a short lil thing about two elezen husbands being bad at talking to each other. (and also i guess caivex being horny because he hasn't seen aymeric in forever.)
> 
> No real spoilers but set after 5.3. Caivex is canonically a black mage, but he's recently been learning paladin, and that inspired this fic!
> 
> ~~hopefully i didn't do his characterization too badly lmao~~

It is on a day that is bright and crisp without a hint of wind or snow that Caivex looks into his husband’s eyes and says quite suddenly, “Teach me how to wield a sword.”

The demand itself is not so greatly unexpected – Caivex has ever been a man blunt in his manner, more hammer than knife. But it is the content of his request that sends Aymeric’s tea straight down his windpipe, scalding hot, and he must cough and choke into a silken handkerchief embroidered with his house’s name until most of it has settled uncomfortably in his lungs.

He coughs again, for good measure, and asks, “And what has brought this on?” with a half-hearted smile that is equal parts pained and inquisitive. (He will visit a chirurgeon later, just to ascertain this mishap will not affect him upon the field.) It is not that he seeks to dissuade his husband (though he knows that Caivex is more than his match in stubbornness, both of them so hard-headed that even Estinien flees when faced with their combined resolve), but he would know what has caused so great a shift in his husband’s thinking. Caivex’s might has ever been magical, and the realm of martial weaponry has never earned even passing interest before now.

(In truth, Aymeric loves the magic his husband controls. It is beyond his ken to recognize the intricacies that make up so delicate a weaving, but any fool with a working pair of eyes can see how aether itself bends to Caivex’s will, elemental fire and ice winding round each other in some twisted ritual that is as beautiful as it is deadly. And there is something decisively satisfying in taking to bed a man who has slain gods and slowly unraveling him until he is but putty in Aymeric’s calloused hands, pliant beneath fingers nicked and gnarled with scars and training.)

Caivex does not answer immediately, more content with sipping from his own tea, pinky finger crooked out in a stilted copy of the lessons imparted on him of Ishgardian etiquette. It is a trial he has undertaken solely for Aymeric’s benefit, that he might not embarrass his husband at the many parties they are invited to – and some of the reproach that had settled in Aymeric’s breast melts away, gone as swiftly as spring icewater, for he recognizes that where his husband falters he must stand resolute.

He wonders what it costs Caivex, to admit the weakness of ignorance. His mouth crooks into its customary smile, and he can almost hear Estinien scoff in his head, for he has ever been too soft toward the Warrior of Light.

In moons past, when Ishgard was yet embroiled in the Dragonsong War, his father warned him that such kindness would well prove his undoing.

But his father lost the right to counsel when he first had his son clapped in chains and tortured.

Even now, Aymeric’s side aches on days overcome with freezing sheets of rain, and he must always take care when first rising from bed each morning. (It is a weakness he is shy to show his husband, though he is certain Caivex knows.)

(Truly, they are terrible at admitting their feelings.)

“I want to do better,” Caivex says at last. “I want to fight by your side and protect your back. As a mage, I must stay behind and hide, and I, I am _tired_ of hiding.”

He rises then, circles the small table they have taken their midday snack at, fingers soft and unmarked as he catches the stroke of Aymeric’s chin. Caivex tips his husband’s head up, looks deeply into his eyes, and says words that drip molten rock down Aymeric’s spine, chasing out all the cold that has settled in his heart ever since Caivex had to journey from his side.

“I will not lose you,” Caivex says.

There is a weight that lies heavy beneath the words, a white-streaked void that screams emptiness and resolution in twinned voices. Aymeric wants to take Caivex into his arms and hide him from the world that would so tear away at him, for every strength his Warrior of Light possesses is equally his weakness. And Aymeric fears that one day he will be swallowed by his own valor.

“I’ll teach you,” Aymeric murmurs, his own hand rising to draw Caivex down, bending him near-double that Aymeric might taste of his lips and ascertain that he is whole and solid and real. Warm.

Alive.

He thinks to himself, _I will not lose you either_ , and knows that to lose Caivex would be to lose the very ground he walks upon. The air he breathes, the water he drinks. The life he lives.

_Nothing but you_ , he thinks as their mouths touch again, _could so easily unmake me._

Caivex’s mouth is rapture. Caivex’s fingers are creation.

They do not set out to fulfill Caivex’s request that day, but that is only because Aymeric busies himself with being taken apart and put back together until he is near-weeping and Caivex’s white locks are slicked down with sweat and his mouth is a wound and a wish wound together.

It takes nearly a fortnight for their schedules to come together: Caivex is drawn closer and closer to Garlemald, and Aymeric must navigate a government yet in its infancy. He is almost terrified that he will never find the time, that his husband will be gone once more to war, and Aymeric will be left at home, forced to command from the rear for he is the man his nation looks to in this time of upheaval, and he cannot abandon them.

(He sometimes wishes he were a more selfish man, that he might set off alongside the Scions. But he knows if he were such a man, his husband might well have passed him over. And he cannot imagine a life where Caivex kept him at arm’s length.)

(If he is more frenetic in his passions at times, if he is near-desperate in his worship of his husband’s body, well – it is only a personal reminder, a self-inflicted wound to keep fresh the knowledge that it could so easily be another in Caivex’s arms.)

“Focus on your stance first,” Aymeric commands. He taps the toe of his boot against the line he has drawn in the snow. “Swing slow, so you can do it properly when you have to do it fast.”

His mouth quirks in a small smile that he is swift to smooth away with a hand when Caivex glances at him, expression befuddled. He knows his husband is unaccustomed to such snappy words from him, but it is necessary that he might master the fundamentals. And this refusal to coddle is itself an expression of love. If Caivex must stride forward into the thick of battle, he will _not_ go unprepared.

Even if Aymeric must drill him until he drops.

“One hundred swings. You’ve been practicing with the weights I gave you, correct?”

“ _Aymeric_ ,” Caivex says. It is not quite a plea and neither is it a whine (Caivex cannot whine, he is incapable of it), but the tone used is so unlike anything Aymeric has ever heard before that he must turn from Caivex and stride away, fighting against the muscles that twitch around his mouth.

“You wished to learn,” he reminds his husband.

Still turned away to watch snow flurries swirl over the ground, Aymeric only hears when his husband scoffs. It is quite audible. And quite adorable.

But then there comes the soft sound of air displaced, and Aymeric glances over his shoulder (hands curled behind his back, every ilm a commander) to see Caivex has set to swinging the old, dulled blade Aymeric provided him with.

It is not a pretty swing—excess energy, too-tight grip, core muscles ignored—but it is a beginning. Aymeric watches a few moments longer, just to see if his husband will naturally engage muscle groups long ignored. But when it becomes apparent that Caivex seeks only to swing without any thought given on how to improve, Aymeric heaves a small sigh and wanders nearer, hands brought forth to catch his husband around the waist.

“Wait,” he says.

Caivex stills under his hands. “Did I do something wrong?” he asks.

“Pardon me,” Aymeric says and without further explanation gently draws his husband’s hips back, forcing him to engage the entire length of his body. “Swing slowly from this position.” He keeps hold of his husband, grip firm, to ascertain he cannot slip back into the easier stance.

Caivex does so, obviously awkward beneath Aymeric’s hands, and he must repeat the action twice before Aymeric is duly satisfied.

“Do you feel the difference?” Aymeric asks.

“It’s more uncomfortable,” Caivex answers.

Aymeric chuckles, leans forward to press a kiss to the nape of Caivex’s neck, exposed by the continued back-and-forth of his body, and murmurs against the shell of his ear, “Many things are until we are accustomed to them.”

Caivex swallows, mutters something that sounds suspiciously like a prayer unto Rhalgr, and says, “May I continue?”

“Of course,” Aymeric says. He withdraws from behind Caivex, hands slow to leave his husband’s waist. Almost immediately he misses the warmth another body drawn near brings and shivers ripple up his body as he circles Caivex.

The Warrior of Light is a quick learner: only the smallest adjustment by Aymeric, and Caivex is already showing a form that most trainees do not achieve until well into their second year. 

After the hundred swings are done, Aymeric pushes his husband through another hundred, with his right foot brought forward. They go through overhead swings, backsteps, parries, and even how Caivex might close in on his opponent before Aymeric is willing to draw the session to a close.

“You certainly showed no mercy,” Caivex tells him, voice turbulent around each gasp of air he draws in. He is not nearly so done in as most young men would be on their first day – but then, he is not some greenhorn, newly-recruited for a grandiose cause that shattered like brittle black ice. He is adventurer and hero and godslayer, and Aymeric sees something of that man in the fever-bright eyes that stare back at him.

He almost thinks the man a stranger.

But then he blinks, startled, and it is only Caivex, clearly done-in and unamused by his husband’s inattention.

(Aymeric wonders if this man has ever been here, carefully stashed from his view, or if Caivex’s time upon the First has stained him irrevocably.)

He wonders what Caivex sees when he looks at him.

“I am only so cruel because I know our enemies will not be kind,” he says. He wants to say, _I love you_ , overtaken with the sudden fear that he has lost his husband, that Caivex has returned a stranger.

But the trembling of his heart stills when Caivex sighs and stretches, his joints popping. When he turns his eyes upon Aymeric again, it is with that customary sardonic grin, the look that suggests mischief. It is a rare expression, rarely employed beyond a handful of situations. 

But Aymeric has seen it more than any other, for Caivex is swift to employ it when he has discovered a new way he may yet send Aymeric into shaking rapture. He starts toward his husband, feline grace, and Aymeric has only a moment to recognize what his husband has in mind before he is caught.

“Here?” he hisses out, composure crumpling beneath the hands that lay such obvious claim to his hip, to his chin. “This is a _practice yard_ , surely someone will see—!"

Caivex practically purrs as he presses a kiss first to Aymeric’s mouth and then to his jaw and then to his neck. His teeth test the sensitive skin he finds there, breath hot and gusting. “That’s the wonder of magic,” he whispers. “This is a little trick I picked up on the First.” The hand upon Aymeric’s hip detaches only long enough to snap and something featherlight and ticklish settles upon Aymeric before fading away.

“No one will see us,” Caivex says, and he rakes his teeth across Aymeric’s throat, directly over the patch of skin guaranteed to make him groan, his eyelids fluttering. “Consider it payback for what you did to me.”

“I only sought to assist you!” Aymeric protests, but he is no longer struggling against his husband’s grip. His fingers are needy, insistent even as he dips them under the band of Caivex’s trousers, heat coursing through him when he brushes against what lies beneath.

“And now I’m assisting you,” Caivex says.

It is the last comprehensible thing either of them say.

It is only later that Aymeric learns Caivex’s trick only blocked sight.

(It takes some time for rumors of an especially passionate ghost haunting the yards to die down.)

Aymeric finds himself unable to look at his husband for nearly three days. And he does not step foot within that particular yard for several months afterward.

But he is happier, reassured. And perhaps that is enough.


End file.
